"Well, I'm glad to hear it, for he tells me you refused him again only last week. Now, look here. One moment, please. Don't speak. I call it Providence, downright Providence," and Uncle Tom rapped the table with a thick finger. "And yet you won't look at him. I don't say marry him out of hand. Of course," Uncle Tom added hurriedly, "you can't leave the old pater while he is above ground. There's no question of that. But I do say, Give the fellow a chance. He's been dangling after you for years. Tell him that some day——"
Aunt Emmy rose from the table, and laid down her napkin.
"Now, look here, old girl," said Uncle Tom, not unkindly, "don't get your feathers up with me. Think better of it. You know this sort of first-class opportunity may not occur again. It really may not. If it isn't Providence, I'm sure I don't know what it is. And I believe your only reason for refusing him is because of Bob Kingston. Now, don't fly in the face of Providence just out of a bit of rotten sentiment which you ought to be ashamed of at your age."
My brain reeled. I had never heard of Bob Kingston. I said "Good God!" to myself, not because it was natural to me to use such an expression, but because I felt it was suitable to the occasion and to a person whose hair was done up.
"Tom," said Aunt Emmy, her soft eyes blazing, "I desire that you will never allude to Mr. Kingston again."
She left the room, and I did the same, with what I hope was a withering glance at the open-mouthed Uncle Tom, who for days afterwards interlarded his conversation with the refrain that he was blessed if he could understand women.
But I dared not follow Aunt Emmy to her little sitting-room at the top of the house. She who was almost never alone, clung, I knew, to that tiny refuge, and it was an understood thing between us that I might creep in and sit with her a little after tea, but not before.
So I raged up and down the empty gilded and mirrored drawing-room, finding myself quite unable to reconcile the situation with my faith in a beneficent Deity; and then consoled myself by chronicling my tottering faith in my diary. I wrote a diary until I married. Then, I suppose, I became more interested in life than in recording my own feelings. At any rate, I discontinued it.
At last, when Aunt Emmy did not come down for tea, I took her a cup.
She was sitting in a low chair with her back to the light. I could see that she had been crying, but she was quite calm. She had a suspiciously clean pocket-handkerchief in her hand. Her sitting-room was a small north chamber under the roof, but it was the place I liked best in the house. On her rare expeditions abroad, before Uncle Thomas had become too ill to be left, she had picked up some quaint pieces of pottery and a few old Italian mirrors. The little white room with its pale blue linen coverings had an atmosphere and a refinement of its own. It was spring, and there was a bunch of daffodils near the open window in a blue-and-white oil-jar with Ole Scorpio on it.